


bite my tongue

by everender



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Protective Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 20:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13197600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everender/pseuds/everender
Summary: "Remember this: you are never to interfere with my orders regarding her. She is mine alone to deal with."They flit in and out of each other's lives, always a little out of reach, and then the First Order takes Rey but Kylo Ren was not the one who ordered her capture. One-shot.





	bite my tongue

The first time he appears after Crait, he is standing at the edge of her room; his gaze distant. 

Rey stays perfectly still, observing him in the moments that he doesn't notice her. 

"What do you see?" she finally asks, her voice not as strong as she would've liked.

He turns to face her. If he's startled at all, he doesn't show it. 

As soon as he opens his mouth to say something, he disappears. 

 

 

The second time, she is outside and trying to meditate. She holds the two cracked pieces of Luke's kyber crystal loosely in one of her palms. 

She feels the familiar distortion in the Force and she opens her eyes. He is in front of her, and in his side of reality, he must be sitting in a chair; elbows leaning on a desk. His gaze falls to the pieces in her hand. 

"They're still salvageable," he says. 

"I wouldn't know how," she replies, eyes closing again. She feels him stand up and move closer to her. This time, when she opens her eyes she is looking right into his.

"I could show you," he says simply.

_I wish you could._

The thought resonates in both of their minds. He exhales softly and settles down across from her.

They breath in tandem, and Rey almost feels something akin to peace. 

 

 

He is dressing a wound the next time - a ghost wrapping gauze around his arm, tucked among the occupants of the mess hall of the old base the Resistance is currently settled on. His tunic is filthy, hiked up his biceps, and she spots a thin streak of blood on his cheek when she looks for a little too long.

His eyes meet hers. She averts her gaze and shoves down the part of her that wants to cross over to him; tie off the gauze herself. 

"Rey? You okay?" Finn says from across the table. A few other Resistance fighters, including Rose, make up the small group surrounding her and she feels everyone's eyes momentarily settle on her. 

She manages a smile. "Yeah, I'm good." 

Finn doesn't look quite convinced, but delves smoothly back into his story anyway, for her benefit, she realizes, to divert their attention away from her - something ridiculous, about how BB-8 shot coins at an enemy. She forces herself to follow along his words more closely, and when everyone laughs a bigger, more genuine smile cracks across her lips. 

She can't help but look back to see if he's still there. 

He's looking right at her, the ghost of a smile on his own lips. Her heart clenches. 

 

 

"Ben!"

She is startled out of sleep by a vase cracking against her room's wall, and she worries wildly for a moment that someone nearby has heard before her thoughts focus. 

He looks startled at the sound of her voice, and something -shame? - passes quickly over his expression. 

He is dressed in his full uniform; cloak hanging around his shoulders and black gloves over his hands. But his tunic is slashed across the abdomen, revealing a bacta patch across it's length, and as Rey's vision finally clears, she sees that the surrounding fabric is tinged with blood.

Rey climbs out of bed immediately and draws closer to him. His hair is disheveled; his eyes bloodshot. 

"Your stomach-" 

"It's nothing," he says gruffly. "A shallow cut." 

"What happened?" she asks softly. His jaw clenches and she knows she can't expect an answer. 

Her hand reaches for his and she slowly slips off the leather glove, watching his expression. He stares at her silently. Their bare fingertips touch and something inside Rey sighs with relief. Her other hand reaches for his cheek, tracing the dark half-moon under his eye, and she imagines trailing her hand downwards, to trace his mouth, to feel-

His hand slides further along hers to interlace with her fingers, and Rey's eyes close. She feels his other hand cover the one laid on his cheek. 

"I've thought about it, too," he says, breath fanning over her face, and he is gone. 

 

 

The First Order finds them.

In some sense it was inevitable, but they thought they'd have more time, and there is pure panic etched into every movement; the lifting of a blaster, the tossing of a pack into the Falcon. 

Ideally, they weren't supposed to fight. Their numbers, their supplies, their spirits were still weakened, but Rey finds herself baring her blaster under the dust-filled sky anyway. 

She is twisting, ducking, firing; her sense of self a little off-kilter without a saber, even though she had gone nearly her whole life without dreaming of touching one, but she doesn't feel  _fear_ until the Stormtroopers seem to be closing in specifically on her - they shouldn't know who she is - but somehow, they do, and she wonders if she should've told Leia about Snoke after all.

"The General wants her alive!" she hears when a blast singes her hair, and her blood runs cold.

 

 

xxx 

 

When he first feels it, he is in the middle of a conference with the higher military officers. 

"Supreme Leader, I respectfully disagree with your strategy," Hux says, and the rest of the officers watch Hux speak, trying to control their expressions. But he sees the agreement settled in them and wants to spit. 

Kylo Ren rests his hands edge of the table they are gathered around and tries to stop himself from hurling it across the room at the red-haired general. The hologram projected in their midst shows the desert-like terrain of a remote planet; the fresh char marks on the ground from where ships had taken off serving as a reminder of how close they'd been to capturing what was left of the Resistance. 

"We cannot spread our troops thin to search for them again," Hux continues. "We need to draw - Supreme Leader?"

A sharp pain blooms in the middle of Kylo's chest and he rocks forward with the sudden force of it. The concern in Hux's voice only enrages him further - he doesn't need the officers whispering rumors of ill health - and Kylo barks at all of them to leave the room. They look reluctant for a moment, but he repeats himself, this time hissing through his teeth, and they file out hastily. 

His grip on the table becomes clammy and his chest burns and burns and burns, his breath stuttering in his lungs, until it disappears as suddenly as it came. 

 

 

He stares into the bathroom mirror.

He's stripped to the waist, eyes searching his flesh for any marks; any indication that the pain he'd felt was real. But his skin is clean, marred only by the old, silvery scars that he's collected over time. 

Kylo lies in bed, hands folded neatly over his stomach. He's stopped trying to force sleep to come. Sometimes he drifts into it easily and others he stares at the ceiling for entire nights, images of his mother, his father, his grandfather cycling in his vision - his own blood stalling him awake. Sometimes, he dreams of her; her touch against his hands, his cheek - his hands on her body. 

He is on the brink when a deep ache traces a line right underneath his collarbone. He starts and through half-awake eyes, lightly traces the path with his fingertips.

He almost believes that it's his uncle torturing him through the Force.

 

 

"If I may, Supreme Leader-"

"You may not."

Hux is walking several paces behind him, both of them headed into the ship's command center, and Kylo keeps his eyes trained purposefully ahead; hands behind his back. 

"You seem distracted. If there's anything-"

"You are not my minder, Hux," Kylo says lowly. He should've thrown that table. The general's grown too comfortable.

Kylo stops suddenly, a few feet away from the center's entrance. There's a quiet, intense hum inside as higher-ranking members of the First Order pore over their latest intelligence. A Resistance sighting. Hux comes to a halt a few steps away. Kylo uses the Force to push him forward; just a little close to be comfortable.

"Remember your place," he says, looking the general straight in the eyes, and Hux looks away. 

He steps over the threshold and the room falls silent. The officers - about a half-dozen of them in total - fall to their knees. 

"Do we know where they are now?" 

"No, sir," one of the navy captains responds, getting to her feet. The rest slowly follow. "They all managed to escape."

"We outnumbered them, had surprise on our side, and still they all managed to escape?" He slams his hand down on the table. "And the scavenger girl?"

"No sign, sir."

 

 

 

He breathes unsteadily, his hands braced on either side of his sink. He looks up into the mirror; at his pallor, the thin sheen of sweat on his chest. The pain is pulsing now, fading in and out of his back, his chest, his arms. He feels feverish, as if his blood is infected by wounds that aren't there. 

"Skywalker," he grits out. The rage that is always simmering under his skin spikes as the name leaves his lips. 

He takes to his bed and falls asleep with his sheets fisted in his hands.

His dream is a flash of images. He sees a desert -  _Jakku -_ his mother in her military garb, snatches of the Resistance fighters, First Order soldiers, a planet full of people. Somehow, the pain is growing steadily stronger as he flits from image to image until his ears are ringing-

" _Ben._ "

His heart seizes.  

"Rey?"

He reaches out into the Force, not sure how to control what he's seeing; how to find her- 

"Ben!"

He starts awake and she is there, standing at the foot of his bed.

His anger rises in him, pure and clear, when he sees that she is bruised and covered in cuts and lash marks. 

Before he knows what he is doing, he's standing a hands-breadth away from her and gripping her shoulders tightly in his hands. She immediately snatches back. Her eyes are bright and full of disdain - for him - and he hears  _you're a monster_ somewhere in the back of his head. 

"Who did this to you?" he says lowly. 

"You don't even respect me enough to not pretend," she says, fists clenched, and a tear marks her cheek. 

He takes a ginger step forward. His strongest instinct is to take her hands and unfurl her rage-bound fingers, but he holds back, hands twitching at his side. 

"Who did this to you, Rey?" he repeats, more gently. She steps forward in a blur and slaps him clear across the face. 

"Don't patronize me," she hisses. He ignores his stinging cheek and grabs her shoulders before she can twist away. 

"I don't know what you're talking about." 

"Your soldiers," she says. "Stormtroopers. So you didn't order my capture, for them to take me to whatever this place is, to torture me?" Her voice rises with every word, breaking at the word  _torture._

Cold rage twists in him. 

His grip on her shoulders loosens. She is looking straight ahead, her eyes level with his clavicle. 

"Rey," he says, and repeats more insistently, " _Rey._ " Her gaze shifts upwards until she meets his eyes.

"I would never harm you," he says, and he thinks they might be the most sincere words he's uttered in his life. "Where are you?"

When she doesn't answer, he lifts his hand to trace along a cut on her cheekbone. He feels her shiver.

"I don't know," she says, expression crumpling. "I'm underground. I think I can sense water somewhere above but that's about it." 

"I will find you," he promises. He can feel the Force pulling back and knows they only have a few seconds left. "I will come for you."

 

 

He finds Hux where he is planning the next day's attack in the command center. All of the officers quiet when they see him enter, some of them opening their mouths and other hastily kneeling, but he only has eyes for one general. 

"You," he says icily, looking straight at Hux. Confusion flits across his features for a moment but he seems to reach understanding just as Kylo flings him against the wall with the Force. In a few strides, he has Hux by the neck with his lightsaber, unlit, pressed to his throat. 

"Where is she?"

"Supreme Leader-"

Kylo lifts Hux and pushes him against the wall again. 

" _Where is she?_ "

"She killed our leader, sir, I was just trying to extract information-" 

" _I_ am your leader now," Kylo says, pressing the lightsaber into his throat. "You will tell me where she is, or I will kill you."

Hux's eyes go wide at the sudden lack of oxygen. "Coordinates- I can give you the coordinates. The planet - not sure of its name."

Kylo steps back and lets Hux fall into a heap. "Program the coordinates into one of the ships." He kneels down and picks Hux up a last time by the collar before dropping him. 

"Remember this: you are never to interfere with my orders regarding her. She is mine alone to deal with."

 

 

"Where exactly will I find her?"

"An underground base. It's partially underwater but the entrance is through a rock formation on the shore."

"Good," Kylo says, boarding the ship alone.

"You understand that I will kill every one of the defectors, and you understand that their blood is on your hands?"

Hux nods silently.

"Good."

He is gone. 

 

 

She is unconscious.

When she appears on the ship, Kylo's eyes are immediately drawn to the fresh bruises blooming on her shoulders, snaking around from her back. The old cuts and wounds have just started scabbing over and already there is fresh blood, mottling her skin.

He can almost taste his anger; a palpable, dark thing that leaves a metallic tang on his tongue.

He immediately crosses over to her and kneels down onto the floor.

"Rey," he says softly. She doesn't move and he vows to kill Hux. 

He runs his fingers perfunctorily over her limbs, checking for anything broken, before sliding his hands under her knees and gathering her into his arms. She is so small, he realizes with a start. So small for someone who takes up so much space in his thoughts.

He holds her on the floor of his ship, his fingers carefully pressed to her pulse underneath her jaw, and takes comfort in each heartbeat until she disappears. 

 

 

He lands in the water and the planet is beautiful.

The entrance is easy enough to find, and as soon as he steps inside, he recognizes the interior as an old Imperial Military base. He takes out his lightsaber and ignites it, not caring if they see him coming. 

"Supreme Leader!"

He turns to see a youngish man looking at him, trembling, from the other end of the metal hallway. A badge on his chest indicates he's a  junior lieutenant. One of Hux's proteges. With a twitch of his fingers the man is kneeling before him. 

"You know what I want."

"You're - you're close, sir. Two rights and a left from here," the man says, and then his body language suddenly changes to that of desperation, "Please, sir, my loyalty is to you, General Hux was-"

Kylo drives the lightsaber straight through his chest and continues. 

The path is clean. 

He hears her scream, coming from one of the interrogation rooms, and rushes to the entrance; blood hot. A monotone voice drones out a question - he barely hears the words - and his eyes go straight to Rey in the middle of the chamber, strapped to a table, and he can almost imagine that it's like the last time he saw her like this,  _you know I can take anything I want_ - 

"Supreme Leader-"

Two Stormtroopers are in the chamber, blasters in their hands, and Kylo slashes through them with little fuss. From Rey's side, a small, gunmetal-black plated oddity has turned itself to face him. 

Hux -the sniveling bastard - has somehow secured an IT-O interrogator. A remnant from the Galactic Empire. The last time he'd seen one was in his mother's head, when she'd been having a nightmare and he was still Ben and trying to figure out what was making her cry out. 

The unit bares knives, some twisted metal things at him and then it is lying in half on the ground. 

Rey's form is limp on the table. He carefully cuts away the bindings on her legs, and her eyes open blearily when he touches a gloved hand to her wrist. 

Something in him withers when she cringes away. 

"Stop hunting me," she says. Her voice is delirious. "I-I don't have the map."

_Don't worry, I feel it too-_

"Rey," he says, his voice low, and reaches for her wrist again. "I'm here to help you."

"Like you helped your father?" she snarls.

_Creature in a mask-_

She snatches back again, this time more viciously, and he feels a weak shift in the Force and a tap somewhere inside his skull. 

He reverses the trick on her and she is knocked unconscious. Gently, he slips one hand under her knees and settles her across his shoulder. 

 

xxx

 

She awakens in a sinking softness. For a few moments, she burrows further into the mess of sheets and blankets she is cocooned in, until she feels dull aches along her back and arms fade into focus. She sits up suddenly, fisting the sheets. 

"You're awake." Ben's voice is a low rumble.

He sits in a heap in a chair at the foot of the bed and rises slowly. He kneels cautiously at the side of the bedframe and searches her eyes. She's not sure what he's looking for.

"The hallucinogen has worn off," he says finally - relieved - and takes a tentative seat on the edge of the mattress. 

"You came for me." She can't name the feeling that wells up somewhere inside her. And it is replaced quickly by an all-encompassing dread. "Where-"

"Still here," Ben says, sensing the rest of her question. His lips twitch in an almost-smile - so quick that Rey thinks she might've imagined it - and he continues, "No, not my ship. It's not exactly safe there."

She sits up straighter. "The Stormtroopers, officers; there were at a half-dozen-"

"Taken care of," he says quickly, and Rey's eyes are pulled to his lightsaber, in a corner of the small room. Something in her instinctively calls out to the lightsaber, despite knowing what its owner has recently done with it - some part of her that's been hollow since her own was destroyed. 

It hovers in the air and weakly traces a path towards her before falling to the ground. 

"The Force." 

"It's dampened here. I'm not sure how it was done."

_And yet I still found you._

It's not clear who the thought came from and Rey looks around at the small room instead of him. Its metallic walls; the spare furnishings. "This place, it's from before, isn't it?" A sort of darkness clings to everything. 

"Yes," he responds simply. Something in his gaze softens. "You should rest. I applied bacta wherever I could but you're not fully healed."

She imagines Ben's fingers tracing along her bare back and heat rises in her cheeks. 

She can't look directly at him. "I need to get back," she says, thinking of Finn, Leia; their faces twisted with worry. Then she looks at him despite herself and a dark thought occurs to her. She isn't strong enough to fight him; especially not with the Force weakened. And another, deeper part of her knows she couldn't bear to lay a hand on him.  

"I won't hold you hostage," he says, his gaze darkening.  _After everything, this is what you think of me?_ "I saw our future, Rey. It's not a future that could be achieved against your will."

_Eventually, you will come to me. Of your own choice._

His gaze travels down to her collarbone; to a single, angry red mark that thickens as it curls around her shoulder and onto her back. "You need to reapply bacta." 

Her heart stutters.

"I'll go get it," he says, and they both know her hesitation. 

She climbs out of bed and sits in the chair Ben had been in minutes ago. She rests her chin on the chair's back; one leg on either side of it. 

She feels him walk back to her and kneel before her. His fingers ghost at her sides. "I'll need to pull open your shirt." 

Rey grips her loose hair with trembling fingers and pulls it to the side as he hikes her tunic up. Goosebumps rise on her flesh where it meets the air.

She feels his gaze on her skin.

"It's mostly healed," he says, voice low. "I'm going to seal up a few cuts."

His fingertips are on her, then; the bacta icy against her heated flesh and she hopes he doesn't notice the shudder that traces itself down her spine. He starts near the nape of her neck and makes his way slowly down. 

"I felt you," he says, his breath fanning over her bare skin. "Your pain." 

His hands are on her lower back now, gripping her tightly. Rey inhales sharply. "I will kill him." 

 _Hux._ The name rings clear through her head.

"I wasn't sure you would come," she whispers. He finally lets go of her and she turns around in the chair. Their gazes are level. 

"You are mine," he says simply, and his words burn somewhere low in her belly. 

He tilts his head forward and kisses her.

Rey's hands go to his shoulders and he lifts her from the chair; turning around to sit down in it himself. She is forced to straddle him, her tunic hiking up again, and his hands go to her hips; thumbs digging into the flesh. 

She is breathless. Her hands start at the hem of his tunic and rove upwards, over the lean muscle, over a shallow scar from that gash on his stomach - it feels so long ago that this was only her imagination - to his back. She tugs at the fabric uselessly for a few beats, until he growls into her mouth and takes it off himself, immediately fitting his lips to hers again. 

His hands climb upwards, over her back and into her hair, and he pulls a fistful taut against the nape of her neck; forcing her mouth to part for his. He coaxes her lips to move against his, his tongue tracing the arch of her teeth. 

"Ben," she breathes, embarrassed at the way his name sounds on her lips, but he only makes a hungry noise into her throat and pulls her impossibly closer. 

"Bed," he says into her mouth, and slides his hands under her thighs. She grips his shoulders, never letting her lips leave his, as he carries them over and lays her down beneath him. 

His mouth dips down to the crook of her neck and she tilts her head back, moaning at the feeling of his hips pressed against hers, and splays her fingers over his naked back. She feels his fingers reach for the hem of her tunic, and her stomach drops in the sweetest of ways when he stops himself.

"You're injured," he says. When he pulls back his eyes are pure black and Rey's thighs clench. 

"I don't care," she says. She reaches for her own tunic but he puts his hands over hers and pins them gently above her head. He kisses her once, twice more along her jaw, and then slowly makes his way back to her mouth before sitting up. 

"Your wounds will reopen."

" _Ben._ "

"You need rest."

She sits up and puts a hand on his cheek, thumb under his eye, like so long ago. "You too," she whispers finally. 

 

 

The first time she awakens, she is still full of sleep, having been started awake by the sensation of falling in her dream. 

Her cheek is pressed to his bare chest and his arms are slung lazily around her waist; heavy and warm. She absentmindedly tangles her fingers in his hair and drifts off again.

 

 

The second time she awakens, he is gone, and she feels a deep sense of loss somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She sits up, aching for his warmth, and sees a black-tinted kyber crystal resting where he was. 


End file.
